a cappella – Newshttp://www.bates.edu/news
Fri, 09 Dec 2016 21:39:16 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1Bates at Night: Merimanders rehearsalhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2016/09/30/bates-at-night-merrimanders-rehearsal/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2016/09/30/bates-at-night-merrimanders-rehearsal/#respondFri, 30 Sep 2016 15:53:45 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=103342Thursdays after 8:30 p.m. in Olin Arts Center are not the best time and place for quiet study — but they are perfect for quality a cappella.]]>

Thursdays after 8:30 p.m. in Olin Arts Center are not the best time and place for quiet study — but they are perfect for quality a cappella.

Like their fellow groups, the all-female Merimanders added singers through auditions in early September and are now honing their sound and look for the hugely popular Back to Bates concert on Oct. 7.

“During auditions, we’re looking at both voice and character — how we blend and interact with each other,” explains musical co-director Audrey Burns ’17 of Topsham, Maine.

Rehearsals refine the sound and presentation, the sense that “we’re all here together, in both character and voice,” she says. “That’s why I kept pointing to my ears. It’s like, ‘Listen to each other.'”

Regardless of activity, student groups at Bates have an all-for-one mindset. “It’s such a positive atmosphere that if I ever have a hard day, this is where I need to be,” Burns says.

There’s not a Meri who hasn’t at some point arrived at rehearsal feeling blue and yet, a couple hours later, left feeling great, says Emily Tan ’19 of Lexington, Mass.

“That just happens, and it’s awesome.”

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2016/09/30/bates-at-night-merrimanders-rehearsal/feed/0Arts Crawl, Sangai Asia Night to showcase student creativity for the fifth yearhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2015/01/26/arts-crawl-sangai-asia-night-to-showcase-student-creativity-for-the-fifth-year/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2015/01/26/arts-crawl-sangai-asia-night-to-showcase-student-creativity-for-the-fifth-year/#respondMon, 26 Jan 2015 19:42:16 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=83588For the fifth year in a row, Bates College presents a dazzling double-header of student creativity in the arts on Jan. 30: the Bates Arts Crawl and Sangai Asia Night.]]>

For the fifth year in a row, Bates College presents a dazzling double-header of student creativity in the arts.

A smorgasbord of performing, visual and literary arts, the Bates Arts Crawl begins at 4:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 30, in locations around campus. The hotspots are the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St., presenting music and the visual arts; and Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave., featuring various performing arts in Memorial Commons and literary readings in the Little Room.

Also in Chase, a children’s artmaking area will be set up in the lobby. Free refreshments will be offered at several locations.

Members of the a cappella group the Manic Optimists cut up during their 2014 Arts Crawl performance.

Immediately following the Arts Crawl at 7:30 p.m. is Sangai Asia Night, a celebration of diverse Asian cultures through performance and traditional attire. The event is held in Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St., and will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Doors open at 7 p.m. both nights.

The Arts Crawl and both Sangai Asia Night shows are open to the public at no cost. For more information about the Arts Crawl, please call 207-786-8212 or 207-786-8294. For more about Sangai Asia Night, email organizers Tam Pham at mpham2@bates.edu or Amanda Pierog at apierog@bates.edu.

While a visitor who wants to stay in one spot will enjoy the Arts Crawl, the event is designed for roaming, taking in a little of this and a little of that. “It’s a sort of tasting platter of the arts scene at Bates,” says Nick Auer, a senior from Fairfield, Connecticut, who is both performing in and helping organize the event.

Premiered in 2011 to highlight the capabilities of Bates students in the arts, the Arts Crawl is now a fixture. “Students have this on their radar,” says Carol Dilley, associate professor of dance and director of the dance program. “The Arts Crawl has settled in as something we do here.”

Though the Crawl and Sangai Asia Night programs are still in development, here’s an overview:

• In Chase Hall, student writers will read from their poetry and prose in the intimate Little Room, on the ground floor at the front of the building. Upstairs in the spacious Memorial Commons, two stages will support nonstop performances of dance, theater, improv comedy and music.

• More music will be provided by Bates’ popular a cappella groups in various locations.

• Sangai Asia Night will feature performances of taiko drumming and a fishing dance from Japan; Chinese flute music; Vietnamese folk singing; and Bates’ spectacular Bollywood Team. Students will model traditional attires from across Asia during the intervals.

Watch video from the 2013 Arts Crawl. Text continues below the video.

The Arts Crawl is produced by the Bates Arts Collaborative, consisting of faculty, staff and students involved in teaching and presenting the arts on campus. Three students are members: Linnea Brotz, a senior from Berkeley, California.; Lillie Shulman, a sophomore from Brooklyn, New York; and Erin Montanez, a junior from Fairfield, Connecticut.

And students have increasingly administered the event in recent years. The Bates Musicians’ Union, for instance, is coordinating the music in Memorial Commons. Three student bands are confirmed to play: “Sabattus,” “Good-Luck Gentleman” and “The Remedy.”

Pendergast and Auer are both officers in the Robinson Players, Bates’ longstanding student theater troupe. Along with helping to run the Crawl, they will perform together in it, previewing a piece that they’re developing in collaboration with the Bates Dance Club. They agree that the informality of the Arts Crawl affords a rare proximity to the raw creative process.

For the performers, “one of the big things is allowing people to see your work in progress,” says Pendergast. “To show something raw and fresh, and see how people react to it, is really useful for a performer.”

For audiences, “there’s an exciting energy to knowing that the creation is happening,” Auer says.

The Crawl, adds Pendergast, “is one of the few opportunities for all of these different arts groups to work together. You can have a Robinson Players piece followed by a dance piece, followed by improv, followed by a cappella. Simultaneously there’s visual art across campus.

“It’s one of the opportunities for people to experience them all at the same time, rather than going to one Rob Players production or one Bates Arts Society exhibit.”

Dancers, actors, musicians and improv comics offer a late afternoon smorgasbord of performing arts in the annual Bates Arts in Action concert at 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25, in Bates College’s Schaeffer Theatre, 329 College St.

Coordinated by the Robinson Players, Bates’s student-run theater organization, with help from other student clubs and from Hannah Miller ’14, formerly a stage manager for Bates dance, the event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please call 207-786-6161.

Performers include the Robinson Players; members of the Dynasty Step Team and the Bates Dance Club; the Crosstones and TakeNote a cappella singers; and Strange Bedfellows, an improv comedy troupe.

The performance “is an opportunity for the broader community to hang out in a relaxed environment and witness a large variety of art performed by students,” says Miller, now an academic administrative assistant at Bates.

The Whiffenpoofs. Nimal Eames-Scott is shown at front center. (Courtesy of the Whiffenpoofs)

The Whiffenpoofs of Yale University, the country’s oldest collegiate a cappella group, perform at Bates College at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 3, in the Gomes Chapel, 275 College St.

The singers include Nimal Eames-Scott, a 2010 graduate of Lewiston High School and the son of Bates anthropology professor Elizabeth Eames.

Tickets cost $20 for the general public and $10 for students, available at www.whiffenpoofs.com/tickets. For more information, please call 570-294-7957.

The Whiffenpoofs began in 1909 as a senior quartet that met for weekly concerts at a campus tavern. The group made its mark on mainstream culture early on with their signature “Whiffenpoof Song,” an amusing adaptation of a Rudyard Kipling poem by Yale students Meade Minnigerode and George S. Pomeroy.

Published as sheet music the year of the quartet’s founding, “The Whiffenpoof Song” became a hit for Rudy Vallee in 1927 and in 1947 for Bing Crosby. Numerous other artists have recorded it, including Elvis Presley, Count Basie and the Statler Brothers, and it has turned up in movies including 12 O’Clock High with Gregory Peck.

For more than a century, the Yale vocal group has ended every concert with the song as a celebration of their brotherhood and tradition.

Today, the group is composed of 14 senior Yale men who are selected annually. The singers take the year off from school and devote the time to singing and traveling with the group.

Today the “Whiffs” continue their tradition with more than 200 performances each year in such venues as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the White House. Their Whiffenpoofs’ repertoire covers a wide diversity, from original compositions to hits from every decade since their beginning.

The group often pays tribute to Whiffenpoof alumnus Cole Porter, and contemporary pop also finds its way into the group’s programs.

The Whiffenpoofs have been featured on various television programs including “Saturday Night Live,” “The Sing Off,” “Today,” “60 Minutes,” “Jeopardy!” and most recently on the fourth-season finale of the TV hit “Glee.” Straight from a spring tour in South America, the Whiffs are back on the East Coast before embarking on a world tour.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2014/05/01/lewiston-native-featured-as-bates-hosts-yales-whiffenpoofs/feed/0Annual Service of Lessons and Carols takes place Dec. 8http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/12/04/annual-service-of-lessons-and-carols-takes-place-dec-8/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/12/04/annual-service-of-lessons-and-carols-takes-place-dec-8/#respondWed, 04 Dec 2013 15:36:36 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=70382Bates holds its annual Service of Lessons and Carols on Dec. 8.]]>

Bates holds its annual Service of Lessons and Carols for the Advent season of the Christian faith at 7 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, in the Peter J. Gomes Chapel, 275 College St.

Sponsored by Bates’ Multifaith Chaplaincy, the service is open to the community. For more information, please call 207-786-8272.

Bates’ Service of Lessons and Carols draws on the traditional structure of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, telling the story of the birth of Jesus through traditional readings from Scripture mixed with contemporary prose. Christmas hymns and musical performances by college vocal and instrumental groups round out the service.

The service will be led by Acting Multifaith Chaplain Emily Wright-Magoon and Acting Associate Multifaith Chaplain Raymond Clothier. Musical performers will include the Three Point Jazz Trio, Chase the Fiddlers, the College Choir, the Gospelaires and several a cappella ensembles: the Crosstones, the Deansmen, the Manic Optimists, the Merimanders and Take Note.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/12/04/annual-service-of-lessons-and-carols-takes-place-dec-8/feed/0‘What Does the Bobcat Say’ parody video ‘might be the best one’ out therehttp://www.bates.edu/news/2013/11/04/what-does-the-bobcat-say-parody-video-tops-11500-views/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/11/04/what-does-the-bobcat-say-parody-video-tops-11500-views/#commentsMon, 04 Nov 2013 20:32:43 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=69733Among the many Fox parody videos in circulation, the Bates version "might be the best one!"]]>

At 8:15 on Halloween morning, a new status on the college’s Facebook page shared a link to a Bates student parody of the uber-viral “What Does the Fox Say?” video.

Thousands of views later, “What Does the Bobcat Say,” exemplifies the big lesson about creating a successful video parody, says the blog Social Media for Colleges.

Through Nov. 10, views of “What Does the Bobcat Say” total more than 17,700.

“You can do it, but you damn well better do a fantastic job,” writes Joe Kuffner.

Among the many “Fox” parody videos in circulation, he concludes, the Bates version “might be the best one!”

What Does the Bobcat Say

While the Bates Communications Office provided the lyrics and production, all the talent came from students: the a cappella Crosstones and Bates Dance Company dancers.

The Crosstones created the musical arrangement, a challenge that fit the “you better do a fantastic job” category.

“It was a daunting task to take such a recognizable song and reproduce it with only 13 voices,” says the group’s musical director, Catherine Strauch ’14 of Exeter, Maine. “It’s such a popular song, so lots of people would notice if it’s not done correctly.”

She did the arrangement of the “popular, ridiculous song,” but the group deserves most of the credit, Strauch says. “The Crosstones are a cohesive and incredibly talented group, so I didn’t feel limited by what I could or couldn’t put in the arrangement.”

Strauch presented the arrangement two days before recording the song, “and we had it down by the end of rehearsal that day.”

Bates Communications writer Tory Stanton, who coordinated the project, tells the Portland Press Herald that “we just wanted to showcase the fun, spirit and talent of our students. They work hard, but they know how to have fun. We basically asked them ‘Can you do this?’ But we had no idea how far they would take it.”

The fun, says Stauch, “was to create something that could benefit Bates as a whole.”

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/11/04/what-does-the-bobcat-say-parody-video-tops-11500-views/feed/1Audio Slide Show: ‘Committed and Dashing’ — Mikey Arsnow and the Deansmen storm the townhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2013/06/12/audio-slide-show-committed-and-dashing-mikey-arsnow-and-the-deansmen-storm-the-town/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/06/12/audio-slide-show-committed-and-dashing-mikey-arsnow-and-the-deansmen-storm-the-town/#respondWed, 12 Jun 2013 14:54:39 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=66286Mikey Arsnow ’14 is a member of the Deansmen. Here he explains...]]>

Mikey Arsnow ’14 is a member of the Deansmen. Here he explains the dynamic within Bates’ oldest all-male a cappella group.

]]>http://www.bates.edu/news/2013/06/12/audio-slide-show-committed-and-dashing-mikey-arsnow-and-the-deansmen-storm-the-town/feed/0King Day Memorial Worship Service recalls memories, asks for actionhttp://www.bates.edu/news/2012/01/17/king-service-2012/
http://www.bates.edu/news/2012/01/17/king-service-2012/#respondTue, 17 Jan 2012 19:38:10 +0000http://www.bates.edu/news/?p=51811Before reading the Call to Worship at Bates' annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Worship Service, Dean of Students James Reese shared his memories of King's speech during the March on Washington.]]>

Before reading the Call to Worship at Bates’ annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Worship Service on Jan. 15, Dean of Students James Reese shared his memories of King’s speech during the March on Washington, Aug. 28, 1963.

“My father was there,” said Reese. “I was watching TV trying to find my dad in the crowd.”

Reese then asked the Chapel congregation to “stand close to one another like they did that day.”

This year’s King service was marked by stories like Reese’s, reminders that for some members of the Bates community, the March on Washington and King’s assassination remain vivid. On this bitterly cold January night, students, faculty, staff and neighbors gathered to share these memories and celebrate King’s life and dream with music, dance and a pledge of commitment to civil justice.

In his homily, keynote speaker Julian Agyeman shared his memories of watching King on television from his home in East Yorkshire, England.

In his homily, keynote speaker Julian Agyeman discusses his memories of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“TV opened a whole world for me,” Ageyman said of watching footage of the American civil rights movement. “A world that was literally in black and white.”

He continued by asserting that King’s dream transcends issues of race. A member of the Tufts University faculty and an advocate for environmental justice and sustainability, Agyeman asked the community to think about the creative and intellectual resources lost when young people are unable to realize their potential. He suggested that if a cure for cancer may be hidden in a patch of rainforest that will be destroyed, it could also be in the mind of a boy or girl who is unable to afford an education.

As in years past, the service included a letter-writing session that reflected this year’s King Day theme of environmental justice. While a jazz trio featuring music professor Dan Chapman and physics professor John Smedley performed, the congregation wrote to thank President Obama for announcing the first-ever nationwide mercury pollution standards for power plants last December.

A combined a cappella choir performs John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

The evening also featured poignant musical offerings by the Gospelaires, the Deansmen and a combined a cappella choir. The Gospelaires, led by Stephen Saxon, include Bates alumni and members of the Lewiston community along with current students.

“I Just Can’t Give up Now” featured a solo by 2011 Bates graduate Megan Guynes. Dance major Victoria Lowe ’12 accompanied the Gospelaires with original choreography for “I Wanna Be Ready.”

This year’s offering was donated to Lots to Gardens, an organization, founded by a Bates alumna, that uses sustainable urban agriculture to provide healthy and fresh food, and civic empowerment, to the youth of Lewiston and Auburn.

Lewiston fiddler Erica Brown, the Boston-area folk-fusion band the Bridgebuilders, and local and Bates College performers appear at the Bates Community Folk Festival starting at 4:15 p.m. Friday, Feb. 11, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Following the festival in Chase Lounge at 8 p.m. is the college’s regular second-Friday contradance, featuring caller Chrissy Fowler and the bands Playgroup and Perpetual e-Motion.

Sponsored by the Freewill Folk Society, a student organization at Bates, the festival is open to the public at no cost. Suggested donation for the contradance is $6. For more information, please contact kwebber@bates.edu.

The festival begins with a slate of performers from Bates and the region, including Leafy Greens, Grace Glasson, Raspberry Jam, Brendan Davidson, Antonio Dominguez, Nicole Singer and the Bates singing ensembles Northfield and TakeNote.

At 5:30 p.m., Brown and the Bluegrass Connection appear. Brown, who has performed since age 7, is a musician celebrated across the region for a style that combines classical technique with the freewheeling spirit of bluegrass.

The Medford, Mass.-based sextet the Bridgebuilders perform at 6:30. Fusing traditional Celtic folk music with funk and rock, the Bridgebuilders create a distinctive blend of timeless melodies and innovative arrangements that incorporate multiple fiddles, bouzouki and Hammond organ.

Led by Greg Boardman, a prominent Maine fiddler and member of the applied music faculty at Bates, the folk band Chase the Fiddlers provides the tunes for an open waltz beginning at 7:30. The session includes a beginner’s contradance workshop with caller Fowler.

From the Midcoast, Playgroup kicks off the 8 p.m. contradance, followed by Perpetual e-Motion, a Maine duo that enhances traditional songs and instruments with state-of-the-art technology.

Four students gyrated in slow motion around Chase Lounge watched by an audience of 20 or so. Sometimes in pairs, sometimes a foursome, sometimes a trio with an odd woman out, they stayed in constant motion — but also in constant contact with one another. Arms around, shoulders rolling against shoulders and hips against hips.

Called “contact improvisation,” this practice is basic to modern dance training, explained Rachel Boggia, acting director of dance at Bates. It helps dancers learn what they’re capable of. It makes them more aware of what others around them are doing. And it inspires new ideas for their work.

Like contact improvisation, there’s no telling what new inspirations will come from Bates’ first-ever Arts Crawl, held Jan. 28. This Friday evening smorgasbord of the arts at Bates, performing and literary and visual, empowered the art makers and showed the campus the breadth and depth of creative work that happens here.

The Crawl told campus, “We’re here! We’re everywhere!” says Kirk Read, associate professor of French and chair of the Bates Arts Collaborative, the group that mustered up the event.

He adds, “Seeing all of these students involved in such marvelous, often impromptu arts events was invigorating and affirming of the arts on campus.” Despite other events worthy of attention that evening, including men’s and women’s basketball wins over Wesleyan and the Asia Night variety show, “I thought the overall engagement on campus was fantastic.”

sample the Bound to Art book exhibition and talk to student artists in their studios at Olin;

catch music, from gamelan to folk fiddling, in Perry Atrium;

hear poetry at Coram and see dance and theater at Chase.

Not to mention surprises awaiting along the way, such as strolling a cappella singers, snow sculptures on the Quad and soft colors emanating from glow sticks buried in snowbanks.

The Crawl culminated Bates Arts Week. Manifesting the renewed emphasis on creative work mandated by the Choices for Bates strategic planning process, the week began with an Arts Summit that brought three experts in community-based arts to campus for a Monday panel discussion, an evening performance by spoken-word poet and hip hop dancer Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and class visits by the visitors.

Mosaic of the arts

Wrapping up Arts Week on a cool starry evening ideal for strolling, the Crawl was by design a show of shows, a big-picture mosaic composed of short impressions.

Leaving the contact improvisers in Chase, an observer stopped next at the Imaging Center, in Coram Library, where large poetry excerpts hanging in the windows advertised the happenings inside: students in Eden Osucha’s poetry course reading their own and others’ verses.

One student read a favorite poem suitable to the weather, Billy Collins’ “Shoveling Snow With Buddha.” Another, presenting her own work in public for the first time, hung her heart on her sleeve with a piece about her parents’ divorce.

Perry Atrium and the Bates Gamelan Orchestra offered an oasis of tranquility. Spare, cyclical, the pure timbres of the metal pot-like and gong-like instruments seemed to emanate from the very bones of Pettengill Hall. Listeners sat still, feeling the sound in their own bones, and the players didn’t move much either, striking their instruments with intense deliberation.

Student artwork in the Olin lobby was charmingly irreverent. A set of line drawings traced the metamorphosis of the farmer from “American Gothic” into a chimp. Sets of paper dolls and their outfits included “Devout Women from Around the World,” posing in their underwear adjacent to habits, niqabs and the full prairie-style dresses favored by women in certain American cults.

If the lobby display (and adjacent Dining Services buffet) was a popular draw, the art studios down the corridor were jammed with visitors — and the energy level rose still more with the arrival of a group of college trustees and faculty, led by President Elaine Tuttle Hansen.

Pouring it out

A cappella was a dominant flavor of the Crawl, with three Bates singing ensembles turning up around campus in scheduled appearances and at large. Heading alongside the frozen Puddle, an observer encountered the Deansmen singing Van Morrison’s “Moondance,” the flat bright light from a pole fixture subbing for Morrison’s autumn moon.

Leaving Commons and campus after a driving display of dance by the Dynasty Step Club, an observer could hear the Merimanders all the way from the Coram terrace, fresh voices pouring it out into the night.

A dance solo in Chase Lounge, a work in progress by senior Lindsay Reuter, was the last stop for a number of spectators. “It was a perfect ending,” says Read. “Lindsay asked our indulgence and reactions. It really warmed the hearts of trustees and faculty who know the value of rehearsal, critique and generous input that happens in a place like Bates.”

Will this crawl be the first of many, or the one and only? “I know that students are energized about sustaining this higher visibility,” says Read. “The idea of a moonlight stroll through a campus that’s on fire with the arts in winter is something that has legs.”